CH 214

Data.204 – Old Bowman, Occultic!

“So… What kind of person is this Macoco Strange anyway?”

Watching videos of the Charin fight and the preliminaries showed that she was someone to be feared, but as someone who didn’t know much about the world of pro gamers, I didn’t have any other information.

If I understood her personality, fighting style, and stance towards the game, it should give me more of an advantage. And so I wanted to hear as much as I could.

After all, there was someone directly related within our party…

“Then I will explain it to you!”

I expected Necoco to speak up, but it was Anne who joined the conversation.

Now that I thought about it, Anne had been talking about how Macoco was someone close to being a Virtualien…

In other words, this related to her interest in the occult.

And so in a way, she might know more about Macoco than Necoco.

“Macoco is an old veteran in the world of VR games. In fact, she’s been played before people started saying ‘Great VR Age.’ She was well known just as VR games were starting to catch on. And while she mostly plays VR games, she used to also upload videos of retro video games as well.”

Oh, she was really going in deep…

A retro game fan, huh… Maybe we would get along.

“However, Macoco is not a famous person. She was a small gamer that only a few people knew about. That is, until she met AUO…!”

“AUO?”

“Ancient Unfair Online. It’s another full-dive VRMMORPG. It was discontinued a long time ago. But it was known for being incredibly free, and management barely knew what was happening in the game…! There were unique skills and equipment, and human-like NPCs!  This was because management was mostly left to AIs, so humans were just there to support them. It felt very fresh and futuristic. It’s been 5 years since it ended, but no game has matched the freedom found in AUO!”

“Hmm. Now that I listen to you talk about it, I feel like I heard the name before… When was it… I think it was on the news…”

“You must be thinking of the AUO forced logout incident! There was an external attack that caused a malfunction that forced players to logout. Of course, such things are quite common in the Great VR Age.”

The Great VR Age…sure was crazy.

“But what is impressive is what happened after! They weren’t able to fix the problem even after five years! That is why the game hasn’t returned! But no one will flat out say that it’s done…! There are rumors about the staff being erased by the AI, or it being opened to an exclusive player base. But I think they are just too lazy to announce that it’s ended. The staff just tossed it out and ran…! Yes, that happens a lot these days!”

I was getting worried about this…age of VR.

“In the end, people still wonder why the service was unable to return. AUO was such a detailed game, and so a few bugs and less players was not enough to end it. There were plenty of hardcore fans let, and they would have still been making a profit.”

“For a company to stop a profitable game…there must be some insane reason that we don’t know about…”

“Exactly! And people continue to debate about it to this very day! Perhaps the game was destroyed from the attack, or the servers exploded or the game has been taken over…! But the theory that I believe is a little different from these popular ones!”

Those were the popular ones…!?

They sounded ridiculous to me. But I suppose the ridiculous was normal these days?

I was really living in incredible times…!

“I believe that the AIs became independent! Ultimately, it was them who ran the game, with the humans just supporting it. And the attackers were also human… The AIs must have become cautious, and so they established the game as its own independent world!”

…Well, now the other three didn’t sound so outlandish anymore.

Yes, there was a sense of romance in that theory. It was occultic and very science fiction.

Still, they had stopped the service of a profitable game, so the reason could be something completely unexpected.

“In fact, there were a few players and NPCs who tried to fight back when the troubles started to appear in the game! Because management was just sitting back and watching! If AIs have hearts, then surely it would be no surprise that they would move away from the humans!? Ah, how occultic!”

“That is indeed an interesting story, but… Um, where does Macoco come in?”

“Ah, that’s right! When people were being forced to logout of AUO, she was one of the last players to stay within the game! And so some people think that she knows the truth! On top of that, Macoco, who had been very active up until then, went silent for half a year. That made her even more mysterious! People think that she was fighting alone within the game, or restored the world within. We can say whatever we want because she doesn’t refute it!”

She alone had remained while everyone was logged out…huh?

That would get you a lot of attention.

But if Macoco wasn’t saying anything, how would people know she was the last one…

Also, none of this was any help to us!

Damn it, it was interesting to learn about something known in the occult world, but we needed something that would help in the upcoming fight…

In the end, not only would I have to watch this fight carefully, but I had to ask the person who was actually close to Macoco…!